UPCOMING EVENTS

I’m Dell and I want you to buy my laptop. The only problem is, I have no clue who you are. Radian6 has been telling me you are out there, my Bit.ly links show that you are clicking, but how do I get in touch?

Enter social analytics SaaS company, ViralHeat, which has just raised $4.25M in first round funding to fulfill those enterprise love connections. With its new service, Human Intent, ViralHeat is moving towards “future-tense” social media – analyzing social decision-making as opposed to measuring past actions. Color it a Match.com for customer relationship management — you have a product, they want your product, ViralHeat gives you the tools to overcome the barrier and start that relationship.

At the moment, Human Intent focuses on fostering sales relationships by grouping social media interactions that display desire to buy. Consumer contacts are provided to the participating business, which then pursues the sales It may seem stalkerish, but if you put your laptop longing on twitter, you should be glad to have the laptops come to you.

ViralHeat has even provided Salesforce integration for Human Intent. Consumer data can easily be exported to the digital Rolodex for immediate access by sales teams. This is a nice, smooth feature that can expedite proactive sales support.

Interestingly, Salesforce is also a pseudo-competitor post its acquisition of Radian6. Vishal Sankhla, chief technology officer and co-founder explains that though Radian6 does provide social analytics, it does not have the ability to detect intent, and thus it is not a complete solution. “They are great at creating and generating reports, we are fostering organic interactions.”

Interactions that chief executive and co-founder Raj Kadam says they would like to take in house. “Right now businesses have to use services like TweetDeck to interact,” he told VentureBeat, “We want to add engagement to ViralHeat.” This will take the form of a communication tool integrated into the Human Intent platform for quick and easy access to influencers in their sales ring. Also in the plans is a layer of artificial intelligence that will assign need priority to customers.

In addition to sales, customer service gripe control is also in the works. While these might not be the love letters businesses hope to get from their consumers, having direct connection to grievances may increase customer retention and satisfaction rates.

Currently in testing, Human Intent is being used by companies like Dell and Microsoft. ViralHeat received its round entirely from Mayfield Fund and currently has a remarkably inexpensive tiered pricing model of $10, $30 or $90 with varying levels of access.